When your organization or business is putting on a workshop, it can be challenging to advertise and fill up the seats that you have to offer.

For that reason, it’s important that you approach this from a few angles: technology, marketing, and other forms of communication.

If you’re worried about filling up your next workshop, or simply want to exceed your last attendance numbers, we’ve compiled this helpful guide on how best to approach this. We will discuss:

Online registration

Integrated payments

Communication

Targeted groups

Incentives

Goals

Are you ready to dive into these expert strategies and jam-pack your next workshop hall? Let’s get started!

1. Allow online registration.

Everything seems easier with the internet, doesn’t it? Registering for a workshop is no exception. By offering online registration and getting rid of those paper forms, you’re likely to get more registrants simply due to the convenience of signing up and paying all in one place.

Allowing online registration also has other benefits, such as:

Generating rosters within minutes

Receiving applications and registrations on time (no more forms getting lost in the mail!)

Automatically compiling applicant information

Beyond these benefits, look for registration software that allows users to do group registration. Group registration lets one user register multiple people quickly, and can get you a higher number of paying attendees!

Convenience is key when it comes to filling seats in your workshop. If you offer online registration, you’ll get more attendees, more on-time registrations, and happier users.

2. Use integrated payments.

When your workshop charges a registration fee, it’s important to make that process as secure as possible. How can you accomplish this? By investing in registration software that offers integrated payments!

For instance, Regpack offers software that integrates the payment process into the overall registration process. This means:

Security is number one. You don’t have to worry about payment data being compromised due to the presence of a detailed security system.

You’ll gain your registrants’ trust. Rather than directing users to a third-party payment site, your registration form will embed directly into your website and payments will occur during this process. Users won’t have to worry about mailing a check or being rerouted to PayPal, for example.

Your registrants can choose their payment plan. If you’re offering a series of workshops, for instance, your registrants can choose the payment plan they want to follow, and then an autobilling system will make sure they comply.

You’ll easily track payments. You can create and run payment reports any time you want, which will make your accounting process easier.

By using software that integrates with your payment process, you’ll instill trust in your registrants and make them more likely to sign up for and pay to attend your workshop. If you want to fill those seats, it’s essential that you make the payment process both convenient and secure.

3. Communicate.

If you want to fill up your workshop seats, it’s important that you communicate with your potential attendees. This means highlighting standouts of the course your business or organization is teaching and offering as much information as you can.

Consider these tips for communication:

Focus on marketing. Create a newsletter to send out to users in your CRM if you use one. Through this avenue, you can send out your agenda to entice those who haven’t registered yet. Encourage them to bring along friends, family, and colleagues, as well.

Take to social media. Create or update your social media pages on the platforms that your potential attendees are using. You can post your agenda here and use it to advertise your other workshops if you’re doing a series.

Follow up. Follow up on payments and send reminders for any outstanding registration tasks. This can easily be done if you use the right software that automates this process.

Part of putting on a workshop means demonstrating the value you’ll bring to those who attend. Talk about the problem you’re going to solve and the other benefits associated with attending your workshop. If you openly communicate through several avenues and give people a good idea of what your program is about, you’ll be able to increase your overall attendance.

If you’re looking for a specific registration software solution, check out this list of the top event management software providers.

4. Choose a target group.

Going along with communication, it’s important that you reach out to the right people. This means you should directly target your marketing efforts to people who are in similar industries and would directly benefit from your workshop.

Follow these steps to ensure you target the right groups:

Create a sign-up form on your organization’s website. Separate from your registration form, you can offer forms that allow people to sign up for your newsletter or other updates on your website. With this information, you can ensure you’re contacting the right people about your workshop.

Collect information. Ask for information about your website visitors’ field of work so you can determine if your workshop (and future sessions) will be relevant to them. Ask for basic contact information, as well, but don’t ask for too much! Otherwise, they may abandon the sign-up form.

Leverage your information. Once you’ve begun collecting information, begin segmenting your supporters into groups within your CRM according to certain demographics such as age, occupation, and location. Use this information to send out updates about your workshops when the instructors are in their city or when you think the program may be something relevant to their line of work, for example.

To represent your organization or business well, you should focus on acquiring new attendees, who could, in turn, become regular supporters or customers. Swoop offers a comprehensive article on customer acquisition, which can be applied to the process of moving your registrants through the conversion funnel. Start with sparking their awareness, educating them, and then moving them through the process to the point where they register for your workshop.

5. Offer incentives for early registration.

Everyone loves an incentive! Give your registrants a reason to sign up early. By offering incentives, you’ll be more likely to fill seats and maybe even end up with a waitlist if word spreads quickly!

Try out these strategies for incentives:

General discounts. Offer a coupon code for a discount if attendees register early. Invest in registration software that allows you to create and trigger discounts automatically. A system that automates discounts for you is great because those discounts can trigger according to the registrant time (if they register by a certain date) or if they register more than a certain number of people. This will remove the headache of calculating discounts and also encourage people to sign up quicker, especially if they were on the fence.

Bring someone free. Offer a free spot for a companion to the first 10 or so people who sign up. You may give up 10 free seats, but you’ll also forge more connections with people who may not have come otherwise. They might even register for a future workshop because of it!

Be sure to think about what incentivizes people to sign up for events and workshops. If your workshop is part of a larger fundraiser for a nonprofit organization, for example, simply offering to educate participants about your cause is a step you should take to encourage them to attend. This is one of several steps you can take in terms of fundraising, but it applies elsewhere, too.

Once you’ve figured out your incentives, you’ll be on your way to using creative and effective tactics to attract people to your program.

6. Set a goal and track it.

Ultimately, you want to fill your workshop seats. It’s a good idea, in that case, to come up with a few metrics to measure your success. By setting a goal and tracking it, you’ll know where your efforts are lacking and where you’re excelling.

Consider the following when setting your goals:

Determine your attendance goal. One of the first steps in planning an event or program means determining your attendance goals. How many people do you hope will register and attend? From there, you’ll be able to start tracking this metric.

Take advantage of reporting features. Use registration software that offers dynamic reporting tools. Get the information you need quickly by viewing your roster and exporting reports. This will keep you on track and allow you to see in real time how many people have registered and figure out if you need to increase your marketing efforts.

Continue to follow up. If anyone has started their registration but left the form midway through or needs to pay their remaining balance, be sure to follow up with them, whether you do this proactively on your own or this is triggered automatically through your software. It’s important that the message is personalized to the recipient, as well.

By setting a goal and holding yourself accountable, you’ll be more motivated to reach the benchmark you’ve set up for yourself. Fill up your workshop seats by keeping up with your numbers and staying organized. The rest will speak for itself!

From using the right software to putting forth a lot of marketing efforts, there are several ways to expertly fill your workshop seats. Keep in mind that there are a lot of alternatives and competitors when it comes to the type of software you should use. Be sure you choose to invest in the one that’s right for your event and/or organization.

Presentation speaks volumes. A post or a presentation with an impeccable design is deemed to be catchy in comparison to texts.

When the text fails to catch the attention of a buyer, it is the image that does the magic. However, the importance of design and visuals is often neglected in marketing. According to research, typography helps in influencing human minds greatly with high retaining capacity.

Getting to the minds of the audience is one tricky thing. No matter how impeccable of an idea you may be having, if you are unable to reach it out to the audience, it is a failure. And this very aspect of conceptualizing the idea and turning it into a marketing tool is where lies the major challenge. This is where designing does its magic.

Yes, you heard it right. While Marketing and Advertising do play a major role in terms of strong copywriting, and promotion, it is the design that plays a critical role in upscaling any campaign. The marketing strategy must not only be focussed on how to generate result but also watch out on how the business can reach to the audience and generate high ROI.

Herein we have enlisted the various advantages of design and how It can help in increasing the sales of a brand:

It helps in communicating a brand

Marketing campaigns and advertisements are all about raising the profiles of brands as well as convincing the customers in buying the company’s product or service. Brands play an essential role in fixing the offerings of companies into the minds of the target audience. More creative the campaign more the chances lie for customers in buying the product. Herein, whether it’s a creative blog, brochure or an image it indirectly aids in talking about the product. And hence it must be impeccable.

However, in comparison to wholly textual data, visuals penetrate into the minds of consumers easily. If the design is less professional and only speaks about the brand’s core messaging it will fail in creating a good impression and undermine its credibility. Hence, using the right quality, texturing and colors are essential aspects to consider for communicating a brand to the target audience.

It attracts the attention of the consumer

If you want to be successful, you must be able to stand out of the crowd. This means coming up with impeccable and out of the box ideas which is different in comparison to other brands. Your marketing campaign will fail to create the magic in it cannot raise a noise above that of other contemporaries who are also competing for a brand same as that of yours.

Thus, the design must try to meet the goal of the campaign in a proficient and finesse manner. The design must be hard-hitting that gets fixed in the mind of the customers over other advertisers.

For example – if you are talking about a health drink, you must use the perfect colorations and design which can create an impact in the minds of the consumers. Great design works as the voice of advertisers which helps one speak about the prospects in a memorable manner making it get noticed.

It aids in converting the potential audience into sales

In marketing, one must foremost be able to understand the psychology of the customers. If your client speaks about conversions, all it means is call to action. Often advertisers fail in this aspect wherein they are unable to determine how psychologically compelling design can be and how it can help in converting sales into profits.

Suppose you visit a website, what is the first thing in which your eyes fall? Is it the writing or the layout? What emotions do the photographs, colors, and use of layouts evoke? This is one such area that stands out in comparison to others. A design that is well crafted and created can masterfully craft your pitch or else pull it down in the gallows of conversion.

It helps in reinforcing the message

Good design never underplays in the game of getting noticed. It offers the best platform in conveying what the marketers wish to divulge or inform the audience. This very aspect invokes the argument on the importance of designing in marketing as well as branding on how it can powerfully evoke a message in the minds of the consumer. One need not need a set of wordings to convey an idea, a few sets of images can do the magic.

For example – In case you run a nonprofit organization. The possibility of conveying the cause is more when one chooses a few images either in animation or photographs than writing hundreds of words of copy on the same issue.

What are the elements of designing?

The designer must be knowledgeable and carry some substance surrounding the intricacies of designing. These include the use of the right color combination, texturing and typography. All these elements play an equal role in making the image stand out.

Some of the elements of designing that can make the image stand out includes:

Colorations and shades

Each color speaks a language of their own. Using the right color combination in the perfect place is an important criterion.

For example – Using a red color for love, green color for brands about health, nature, purple for showing the richness, etc. are few aspects a designer must keep a note about when developing the image.

Positioning

The image must be focused on the central character that is your brand without taking away the essence of it. The consumer’s eyes must first fall on the brand rather than wander all across the image. Thus, using minimum typographies and other elements is yet another important aspect.

Symmetry

The image must be symmetrical, this means all the elements used in the image must not be placed in a haphazard manner. They should be in sync with one another relating to each other. In short, the design or image must be able to convey the story without speaking about it loudly through words.

The right balance of idea, design, and conceptualization is the key factor of increasing sales without using words.

No matter how big you become, you can never claim that your customer loyalty is a going concern forever.

Either consumer expectations will change, or the competition will start providing something better in the market. And frankly speaking, you cannot control any of the above in a free market.

Customers are value maximizers. It means that customers will come to you when you are proposing higher perceived value than the competition. Customer’s Perceived Value (CPV) is the difference between the benefits of product/service received by the customers and the costs incurred by them to get those benefits. And these costs do not include only the monetary part. Non-monetary costs like buyer’s time, effort and psychological toll are also considered while calculating CPV. As long as you provide high CPV to your customers, they will stick to your business.

There are three ways to maximize CPV. One, you increase the benefits provided by your product with the latest features and advanced methods which will increase your costs. Second, you decrease the monetary costs associated with your product that will affect the gross margins. And third, decrease customers’ non-monetary costs. And the reduction of these non-monetary costs will not only retain your old customers but will also help in attracting the new ones.

In this article, we will discuss 8 customer retention strategies which can reduce these non-monetary costs for your customers:

1- Get Close

How close are you to your customers? Getting close here means that your business should be easily approachable. If a customer has to wait for hours before getting in touch with your customer care executive. Or your business does not reply to his emails for days. Then you are definitely not close to your customer. And proceedings on these lines will soon make you invisible in their eyes, and hence they will move to a competitor who listens to them.

With the entry of social media and new review systems, it has become more challenging for businesses to respond immediately to the feedback coming in from various channels. But if a business puts an honest effort in improving conversations with customers, then huge ROI can be expected in terms of customer loyalty.

2- Frequency Programs

Designing frequency programs is also a complex process. You have to maximize the impact on loyalty and minimize the load on your pockets. But if you are creative enough in managing them, then FPs can be a great way of improving customer retention.

FPs are appreciated because they create cross-selling opportunities for your business too. For example, if you are owning a PVR and you start offering popcorns (a high margin product) on a discount for every 3rd movie watched by your frequent customer, then he will be tempted to watch at least 3 movies to buy those popcorns at a cheap rate.

3- Premium Club Memberships

Every business has some high revenue generating customers. These customers are very important for businesses like banks, law firms, airlines, and consultants, etc. These people do not shy away from spending on high-end products of your business. Then why not create a special club for such customers. This will be a major psychological boost for them.

These club members get access to some special benefits and discounts on their purchase. For example, if there is a customer who is a frequent flyer and always books business class tickets and luxury hotels on your travel website. You can make him part of your premium club and offer him a small taxi ride from the airport to his hotel for free.

Such strategic initiatives are not only economical but also give a psychological pump to the customer.

4- Create Tie-ups

This strategy is useful for both B2B and B2C businesses. It is very important to have loyal customers in B2B businesses as the order size is measured in millions and billions of dollars. Businesses (clients) can be made loyal if you make them dependent on you. This dependency can be created with the help of institutional tie-ups.

For example, if you are a commercial vehicle seller. It is important for your customers to get their newly bought vehicles insured. Hence, it becomes obvious for you to have a tie-up with an insurance company. This will save both time and energy of your customers. Thus, resulting in a spike in customer retention.

5- Brand Communities

Whether it’s “HOG” of Harley Davidson or the “Citizens” of Manchester City FC, your brand name can work wonders for your loyalty. A brand community cannot be built overnight. For that, you need some proud customers who are ready to show their love for your company without hesitation. They can also reduce your marketing cost so much as they are your advocates.

A community is the result of the differentiation of your product and marketing capabilities. A brand community once built, will push your customers to stay within that elite group which resonates with their likes and gives them a sense of affiliation.

6- Personalization

Customizing your product/services for different customers also generates a sense of belonging in them. Who doesn’t like to feel special?

Therefore, it is your responsibility to treat each customer like they are your priority. But to create personalized services, you need some proper data management. You should know what your frequent customers like about your business and what makes them come more often. This is very useful in hospitality businesses and food-related ventures.

7- Benchmark Competition

Although this is necessary for all parts of the business, it plays a critical role in driving your customer loyalty. Never underestimate your competition. Always keep an eye on their latest offerings. Check if their strategy is working and act fast on it. After all, they are trying to take away your market share.

8- Win-Back Strategy

No matter what you do and how much you do, it is an undeniable truth that some customers will leave at the end of the day. But that does not mean that they cannot come back. It will be easier for your business to re-attract the old customers as compared to new ones because you know who they are. You have their contact details and buying history.

Plus, they are a great source of honest feedback. Contact them for an exit interview. Ask them what they did not like about you. If you can make some changes to get them on board again, do it.

Bonus Tip: CRM

Throughout the article, in implementation of all the 8 strategies, did you have a thought that your customer and sales data plays an important role here?

Of course, it does. First of all, you won’t get to know about your frequent customers if you don’t have any statistics of your sales. You cannot build FPs, club memberships, and brand communities for them. You cannot personalize your service if you don’t have their purchasing history. You cannot win back your ex-customers if you can’t retrieve their names and contacts in a click. CRM can solve all these problems for you.CRM software records and analyze your sales data. These analytics can tell you about your frequent and premium customers. It also provides you with insights about your strong and weak areas which will help you in improving your sales cycle. Hence, implement a CRM in your company to know your customers better so that you can serve them better.

We are currently living in an era that is facing constant digitalization. Most consumers are brought towards brands solely through digital media and content.

One such form of digital content that is gaining great prominence is video. Surely content is king but static visuals and text-based content do not work anymore. If your intention is to provide value to your customers and strengthen your presence at the same time then you would have to rely on animated video content.

Social networking and video streaming platforms are aplenty but YouTube is leading the competition as of now. Various digital marketing techniques and platforms are available but YouTube has become an integral part of online advertising so marketers, strategists, and animators should know its value.

Understanding the popularity of YouTube

According to Statista, YouTube currently has over 1.5 million users on a global scale. That is surely not a minor number as this user count is expected to increase to 1.86 billion any time soon. This fact suggests how a video-streaming platform can easily become a core hub for digital marketing.

The expected gross revenue generated from YouTube in 2018 was 20.4 billion U.S. dollars. This conveys that YouTube can even become a lucrative source for revenue generation. If you are aiming to build an online presence for yourself then here are some major video trends that you can make the most out of on your YouTube channel.

Live Streaming

Some live-streaming platforms were solely meant for streaming video games and Twitch has been widely used for it. However, social media sites and apps now have the option of live streaming as well. Facebook Live focuses on a wide range of topics and content but YouTube still has more power over both these platforms. Some of the most viewed videos are already on YouTube but no one could comprehend that the Royal Wedding live stream could secure 11.2 million views. Since YouTube is all about subscription count and quality content, you might not gain views on live-streams if you are a business but it can still bring a significant and positive impression on your presence.

Viral Internet Challenges

Social media is filled with internet challenges on a monthly basis. Some challenges are made only for virality and are uploaded usually on YouTube. Most of these fun viral challenges are uploaded on YouTube and social media profiles but one can bring the depth of social wellness into these challenges as well. The ice bucket challenge, in particular, was meant for fundraising and it became a global phenomenon. Popular YouTubers, influencers, social workers and celebrities took part in this challenge and as a result, it became a huge success.

Training and eLearning Videos

Content on YouTube is not limited to only the entertainment domain. eLearning content has gained popularity on online platforms and YouTube has a major role in it. Since live action videos for learning purposes can be costly, you could resort to using an animated video explainer. This notion would bring more and more people towards your audience since animated videos are engaging and interesting to watch. With short length videos, less time would be consumed and a greater quantity of people would prefer viewing your content.

Unboxing Videos

Unboxing and haul videos are somewhat similar. Such video content has been around on YouTube for a while but now unboxing videos have taken a shift towards being lucrative for marketing purposes. As the name suggests, the camera’s focus is on the package or product that is going to be unboxed and then reviewed. It is more of a review video but the anticipation such content builds has made it famous among several YouTube users. Popular subscription-based boxes such as Loot Crate, Ipsy and Boxycharm are mainly a part of unboxing videos.

Shopping Videos

Shopping and haul videos are typically popular among bloggers and influencers. This trend of haul videos might not be relatively recent but such content is also a part of the trending videos on YouTube. While this specific content style can be opted by anyone, it is still on the rise amidst popular and emerging influential bloggers. Since female bloggers contribute to haul videos often, an approximate of 40% of people who view such content purchase the products and items displayed in the video. However, retail brands are now reaching out to YouTube influencers to highlight the products they are offering.

Gaming Channels

This domain is somewhat limited to a smaller audience but a few platforms already exist for streaming and uploading games. While both YouTube and Twitch have the option to monetize content, what visible benefit does it have for marketers and brands? The popularity of online games and console games will probably never decrease. If a brand or company wants to market electronic goods and products for gaming, they would certainly need someone to showcase the products online. That is exactly where the role of YouTube comes into play as that specific brand could reach out to its customer through the existing famous gaming channels.

Celebrity Channels

Quite a few Hollywood celebrities have joined YouTube recently. Each celebrity has a different focus on video content. Some make vlogs to connect with fans, while some showcase their product launches. These celebrities also resort to social media platforms but YouTube is a prominent platform for those who want to keep their focus on quality videos. However, how does it benefit marketers? Marketers are able to form an association with both online influencers and celebrities at once. If a business or marketer shares a viral post or video made by a celebrity then as a result, it would capture user attention on a greater scale.

Virtual Reality Videos

The application of virtual reality technology has spread among several different types of industries. From gaming videos to building shopping experiences, virtual reality can be found almost everywhere. However, nobody expected that VR technology would benefit the real estate business. Virtual reality videos and walkthroughs are being used for architectural visualization of the interior and exterior of properties. Since VR is more than 3D visuals, the viewers can interact and engage with the surroundings before making a purchase decision.

Conclusion

The upsurge in the fame of video content seems almost uncanny. The types of digital content are emerging slowly and YouTube has played a visible role in the notion of digital marketing done solely through videos. Innovational and interesting ideas for digital media and content are unceasing. No matter what medium or platform you have chosen, the video will always yield you the results you are looking to get.

The probability of securing a position in the top trending category on YouTube is not a far-off reality. Instead, if you make use of the right strategy and marketing approach, you will acquire visibility and recognition in no time. Now is not the time to fret but it is the moment to make the most out of YouTube.

Is it being difficult to wake up early? Is it getting boresome to commute to the same place every day?

Are you not enjoying being bossed around? Is your creative aspect being killed by your team leader? If yes, you are just like other designer working in different mobile app development or web development companies.

Quit it! This is something you would have thought a Million times but gathering the courage and actually doing it is a whole different story. There is a risk of being jobless and salary-less. If you plan it well, you would have work, get paid beautifully, yet not have to go to the office and being bossed around. No, this is not in some fantasy world, this is possible in real times.

Working as a freelance web designer is something you should try. I know there would be a series of questions running in your mind. Take a deep breath, put on your reading glasses, take a cup of coffee, and just continue reading. We have a long way to go with the answers to your questions and how can you become one.

FAQs About Freelance Designer

1- Can I earn more money in freelancing work than a regular job?

I don’t want to give a diplomatic answer and make you hate me for this question and the answer. But, really it depends on your skills and client relationship management. At first, it might be difficult to fetch the clients and survive without any stable salary base. But, once you have got your skills all set and charge half the price than the development companies with faster and better work and yet make more money for yourself, you are going to have the satisfaction and monetary gains.

Well, I am totally jealous of my freelance web designer friend who doesn’t take to wake up early, take shower, get into boring formals, and travel a long way in the traffic to the same boring place to see the same boring faces every day.

2- Am I free from dealing with all the annoying people?

Well, being a freelance designer doesn’t mean you are free from dealing with people. You would still have to work with clients. You never know which client is like what. So, working in a web designing company or working as a freelancer, you will not be free from tantrums of people.

3- Do I have total freedom while working as a freelancer?

I am sorry to give you a rude awakening from your fantasy world. But, no you will still be bound by the deadlines by the clients and have to work with it. But, at least you have the liberty to decide on which time you want to work and which time you want to enjoy. You can complete a project in 3 days and enjoy the rest three days of the week. It’s totally upon you. Also, in case of the creative liberty, it’s the client you have to impress or take the opinion from and not bound to pass through the process of a senior designer, team leader, boss, and the client.

How Can You Become A Freelance Designer

1- Portray Your Designing Skills

You will have to interview once and got the skills. But, when you are a freelance designer, with every new client, you will have to prove you are creative and expert. A portfolio of past works can be a help here. You can showcase your skills on different platforms like Behance and Dribble. Portray various skills with samples of website designing and mobile UI design.

2- Create a Profile on Platforms

There are special platforms for freelance jobs. Register and create a profile on these platforms to get work, popularity, and of course money. Here is the list of these platforms:

Upwork

Freelancer

LinkedIn

Indeed

Webflowexperts

Toptal

3- Search For The Clients

There are plenty of different ways to search for clients. You can have your own website showing your services and client reviews or reviews from your past employers. Start sharing posts about your work on different social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and various others. Share with your friends and family. Ask your past clients and ask them to spread the word as well.

4- Maintain Relation

Maintain the reputation and relation with the clients. Ask them if they need any help and do it as a favor to them. This will create a positive image of yours and whenever someones approach with a question, do you know any freelance designer for my mobile app designing or website designing project? The answer will be your name.

5- Be Time Bound

The chances of losing the clients would be very high when you don’t fulfill your time commitment. Provide a timeline only which you can comply with. A delayed timeline would be a disappointment on the client side and chances of referring you to other clients would be diminished.

6- Use Best Designing Tools

Of course, staying updated with the latest designing tools is one of the must follow things as not just freelance designer but as a designer on a whole. Let me jot down some of the best tools you must be using:

Photoshop

Sketch

Illustrator

Harvest

Mockplus

Slack

Bonsai

If you don’t want to regret the decision to chuck off the job and be your own boss. Here are some of the essential things you must know and follow.

1- Be Transparent About Payment

It’s not just about how much money you should be taking but it is also about how and when you are receiving. Decide beforehand whether you are working on an hourly basis or fixed cost. Also, take the payment in milestones. You don’t want to keep asking for money for months even after delivering the work in decided time.

2- Written Contract

This is the only thing that can help you from frauds. Clear the terms of work and payment in the written contract. Be clear about whether you can publish the work or show it to future clients for reference.

3- Future Planning

Make a note of how much money you are going to need before the start of the month. Also, check in whether you will be able to make that amount of money if you ditch your job. If you are confident enough, you are ready to be your own boss.

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One of the most interesting stories about a startup name is how Steve Jobs decided to name his startup.

“Apple” has very little to do with what the company does. However, if Jobs were to name his company in 2019, he would’ve gone for something more relevant.

Naming conventions change with time. Today, startups must be very particular about their app or brand name. Not only does it have to be catchy and interesting, but it also needs to be SEO friendly. But that isn’t the only factor that counts.

Naming your app startup is nothing short of a science. There are certain rules to follow. There are certain limitations as well. Today, we will break it down to help you systematically manage the process of choosing a name that sticks.

Start with the Purpose

So, let’s get back to one of the most important aspects we have discussed – relevance. And by relevance, I mean how accurately it defines the purpose or features of your app. There are literally hundreds of apps that share the same features and users are most likely to tap on one that sounds most relevant.

Now, the same rule applies to your startup name. Your startup name also needs to be relevant to the app’s features and its name.

Imagine looking for an app for budgeting or any other finance-related task. Would you click on an app that has a relevant name but is created by a company called xyz Fashion Store? Both the startup and app names should clearly define the purpose so that users can put their trust in your hands.

To get a better idea, look at all the utility apps you have on your phone now and see how the name related to their function.

Play with Words

Nothing catches attention like some funny wordplay. It is smart, yet understandable. A great example of how startups play with words when naming their apps is “Waze.” The app literally helps people find numerous ways to reach a place. In simpler words, it is a map app. Also, Pinterest is a fine example of play on words for an app.

Wordplay isn’t as easy as it sounds, but if you have a knack for puns, you will do great. Puns are funny, and they can really make your startup name catch on. Some of my favorite puny brand names include “Wooden-it-be-nice” furniture store and the classic “Tequila Mockingbird” bar. These are all retail businesses, but worthy of mention.

Another way to make use of wordplay is to use rhyming words to stick them together like WerdNerd, SnapChat, and FitBit.

Keep Things Short

Google, Tinder, Apple, Skype – what do they have in common. Their name is short and memorable. Unlike retail stores that can do with longer names, app startups must deal with a target audience with a shorter attention span. You don’t just need to grab attention, you need to snatch it away from the long line up of competitors showing right next to your app on the store.

A golden rule here is to keep it within eight characters with two to three syllables. Now, can you think of an app that defies that rule? Probably not.

However, short doesn’t always mean simple. Some short names are more complicated to pronounce. A friend once complained about how she faces trouble saying B614. Despite being short, the name can be tough on some people’s tongue. And you don’t have to hire a linguist to tell you that. Ask just as many people as you can to say the name, and you will know if there is a problem.

Make it SEO Friendly

Like we said earlier, relevance is the key. And it is not limited to how people see the relevance. Search engines should also be able to see it.

Both Google and Apple might have gone with a more SEO friendly name if they were to name their apps in 2019. It would have been a more tech-friendly name that shows they are IT firms.

It is an important factor because around 63 percent of the traffic on app stores is generated by search. When people search for an app for a purpose, they use keywords such as a calculator or puzzle games. It helps to have your keyword in your name.

There are hundreds of examples of apps that make great use of their strongest, most relevant keywords. LiveAuction is one of them. People will literally type “live auction” in the search bar to find live auction platforms.

While we are talking about searchability, let’s not overlook the idea of piggybacking on most searched terms. In 2016, a gaming app company decided to make the most out of Trump’s presidential campaign with an app called “The Great Wall of Trump.” While it is a simple brick game, the app showed in numerous searches for Trump or his idea of the great wall.

Verbability

Never heard of verbability? Well, I just created a new word.

Some words have the power to become a verb. Google is the biggest example in this case. People now tell each other to go “Google it” whenever they mean to say search it online. In all honesty, it is because it is easier on the tongue and it is an action verb. If Google had a name like “YourSearchBar,” things would’ve been different.

So, it is always a good idea to think of action verbs that can catch on as a trend. Think of how the name can be used in everyday language. If it can replace the action it does, it is verbable. It doesn’t even have to be a verb that already exists. It just must sound like it should.

Watch Your Competitors

There is nothing wrong in taking a hint from your competitors. Look for apps that appear on the top for your strongest keywords and see how they name their app and their startup. Take notes.

However, that doesn’t mean you should come up with a name so similar that it almost sounds like a rip-off. You want your startup and app to stand out rather than seem like a copycat brand. It is just like all those “angry-xyz” apps that were launched after Angry Birds. No one really liked them.

Use your own creativity to come up with an even better name. Keep your USPs in mind. Even if there is just one feature that sets you apart, use it to your advantage.

Running a little competitor search is also helpful in avoiding conflicts. Sometimes startups think they have come up with an amazing name, they create an entire app and branding campaign based on that name, only to be hit by a lawsuit by a company that is already using that name.

Conclusion

Now that you know the dos and don’ts of naming your app startup, take your time and think of more than one options. Take opinions from other team members and even people in your circle who fit the description of your target audience. Once you have a name that checks all the boxes and has a general likeability factor, make it official.

When setting up an e-commerce store, the majority of the entrepreneurs usually assume things will automatically work out, and they will start making good money from sales.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Setting up an e-commerce store is just a fraction of the work and plenty much is required to attract visitors to the site, convert the traffic and retain customers by winning their royalty. If your website is not performing as expected, it is wise to first to investigate where your e-commerce store is failing.

Where is your website failing? An e-commerce website has three levels where failure in either can deny you the much-needed sales.

1st Level – Attracting-the-buyers phase:- to make sales you need to attract buyers. You need to attract new visitors and returning visitors to your site. Failure to attract visitors means you will have no one to sell two.

2nd Level – Conversion stage:- Attracting visitors to your site is not enough if they will visit and leave without interaction or buying. Consequently, it is essential first to attract the right or most appropriate customers. Otherwise, if you net the wrong traffic, you will end up with just a high bouncing rate. You also need to avoid losing visitors due to inaccessibility by ensuring your e-commerce is responsive and easily accessible on any device.

3rd Level – Retention stage:- After making the first sale to a client things don’t just stop there; you need the customer to come back and buy more. The 3rd stage is all about ensuring the return of the clients.

With the correct identification of the stage, your website is failing you can amicably solve the bottleneck and boost your sales. Here are the basic tips we have found to work wonders to non-performing e-commerce sites.

Tips to attract traffic to your e-commerce site

1- Vigorous, specific-target-market oriented advertising – Yes, this may sound a cliché, but advertising remains a principal aspect in sales and marketing. For a site to be known, especially a start-up making an entry into the marketing, it essential to market it. Advertising is all about familiarizing your products and services to consumers with an emphasis on how your product is better than alternatives. E-commerce has emerged in an era that has seen a drastic evolution of advertising from the use of mainstream media to digital platforms with numerous new advertising techniques. The secret behind successful advertising is knowing the right platform to advertise and the most appropriate advertising technique to use.

Digital advertising offers many advertising platforms/channels one can use including social media marketing, search engine marketing, influencer marketing, etc.. Identify the right platform is guided by the target market; aim to advertise on the platform where your target market is dominant. For example, if your target market is the youth, the social media where the youth dominates such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., should be your primary advertising platform and your language should be more informal and fun. On the other hand, if your target market is other businesses, LinkedIn is the best social media platform for B2B advertising, and your advertisement should be more formal with an official tone. Advertising on these platforms can take different forms from having a branded account, publishing posts or paid ads.

With the right platform, you also need to adopt the appropriate technique to net the most appropriate traffic. Among the most effective advertising techniques for e-commerce sites include:

Google shopping advertising – is a type of ad designed for e-commerce site where a product, its image and detailed information including its price are featured on the search engine result page. The listing can be individual items referred to as “Product Shopping ads” or several related items referred to as “Showcase Shopping Ads. Shopping Ads makes it easy for the consumer to find a specific item instantly on the search result page and on clicking the ad the potential buyer is directed to the product’s e-commerce page. The technique nets more traffic compared to the standard search engine ranking and can be the breakthrough a non-performing e-commerce site needs.

Google Shopping Ads triggered by the search query “Jordan Air Shoes”

Remarketing/Retargeted advertising – if you browse or buy products/services on e-commerce site, I am sure you must have notices ads of the very same products you were viewing or related product following you as you visit other websites, social media or email especially Yahoo mail. This technique is retargeted-advertising – an effective marketing technique that utilizes the user’s browsing habit. It is a form of Pay-Per-Click advertising that any website owner can utilize to net traffic of either people who had visited their site earlier or those who had visited another site with similar products. The technique uses browsers’ cookies to gather information about the users browsing habit. The collected browsing data is then used to direct the ads to the specific users who had visited an e-commerce site re-netting the bouncing. This traffic is very likely to make a purchase.

Example of a retargeted marketing on social media

Search advertising – this is search result oriented advertising and include Google Ads and Bing Ads. When a user searches a set of keywords, Ads appears alongside the organic search results usually at the top of the organic search result. As a result, an e-commerce site that would have barely made it to the first search-result page gets a competitive advantage and ranks at the top. The website ranking is pushed to a position that nets huge traffic increasing the probability of conversion.

Google Ads ranking at the top of the organic search result.

2- Optimizing your content with a target of ranking position zero (at the top of the search result page) – paying alone to rank at the top of the search result page cannot be sustainable, your website also needs to rank well organically which can only be achieved through optimization. The higher your e-commerce site ranks on the search result page, the higher the traffic it nets. Optimize your e-commerce site with a target of ranking first on the search result page and this supplemented with paid ads is a sustainable way of getting high traffic.

Tips to boost traffic conversion

3- Reduce site bureaucracy – e-commerce sites lose a significant percentage of their incoming traffic to the complex long registration process that is compulsory in many e-commerce sites. The forced registration is estimated to account for up to 35% of the abandonment rates. The sign-up process should be as easy, short and less time consuming as possible. If possible configure your site to facilitate guest’s check-outs making signing up optional. In such a scenario you can entice clients to sign-up such as by offering a percentage discount to the registered users or free delivery. The less the bureaucracy, the less the traffic bouncing rate.

4- Improve user experience – the current generation is a generation of less patience, less tolerance, high efficiency and always looking for a better option, and for your e-commerce to be successful, it must meet the current generation demands. Improve your website UX ensuring the site is light enough to load quickly, is accessible on any device, is easy to navigate and the best-selling items or items on sale/offer are showcased. Besides, you can try to improve the readability of your e-commerce site by de-cluttering the pages, easing navigation, maintaining adequate whitespace between products, and using manifest headers and price listing.

5- Personalized call-to-action – another prone area that potential buyers get lost on e-commerce site is the call-to-action. Some e-commerce sites are developed complicated with hidden call-to-action buttons, ending up losing potential buyers who have no time to browse around and experiment. A good e-commerce website should have a clear, personalized call-to-action. For example, the experienced buyers who do not necessarily need to read through the product details should be able to see and click the buy button on the product listing page. On the other hand, the in-experienced buyers who need to click to view or preview the product should also have the buy button on the subsequent pages.

A clear call-to-action button on an e-commerce site (source: Big Commerce)

Tips to retain customers.

6- Clear communication – communication is key to every business and an active ingredient in building customer loyalty. For an e-commerce website communication should be two way, buyers/potential buyers to the e-commerce site and e-commerce site to the buyers. From the onset, potential buyers should be able to contact customer care as efficiently as possible either through live chat or email. After making a purchase, buyers should also be able to reach customer care in case they have issues with the delivery, they are unsatisfied with the product or to make any other inquiry. On the other hand, the e-commerce site should be able to respond to the buyers’ inquiries as instantly as possible and offer them the needed assistance. After, a successful transaction, a client should also get an opportunity to give their review, which should be displayed publicly on the site whether negative or positive. The reviews boosts the e-commerce site legitimacy and authority, builds customers trust and statistically over 70% of the consumers consults a product’s review/rating before making a purchase. The site should also respond to the consumers’ review where necessary. Effective communication that solves issues leaves the clients satisfied and loyal to the e-commerce site.

7- Email marketing – the operation of an e-commerce site is more of a cycle than a linear process. Making a successful transaction is not the end of the road; the e-commerce site requires the buyers to return and buy more in the future. As a result, the technique of email marketing was developed which is an effective way of contact buyers who have registered on your e-commerce informing them of new goods, new offers and discount to attract them back.

Remarks

Earning from an e-commerce website takes more than just having an e-commerce website developed. It is one thing to have an e-commerce website up and running and a different thing to start making sales from the e-commerce site. There are three other phases that follow the development of an e-commerce website; introducing the website to the consumers and attracting them to the website, converting the traffic landing on an e-commerce website and finally attracting back the successful buyers. Knowing the stage your e-commerce site is failing is the first step of turning around the tables and boosting the sales. The tips above for different stages may a be a good starting point of having a functional e-commerce site.

E-commerce business is very productive yet quite challenging to make a mark.

Sometimes it becomes difficult for entrepreneurs to make their business a success and many online businesses end up being an ultimate failure.

Lack of knowledge and expertise may drag you to a blind path, which eventually ends nowhere. No matter your business is flourishing well there are always chances of losing the track and loss of interest from the target audience.

Not Appearing in Top Searches

When you will not show up in the top of search rankings, eventually you will get ignored by many. You shouldn’t expect to be found either way by your potential customers instead there is foremost need of each website to be optimized according to the advanced SEO standards. As nearly as 35% people prefer to search for products through search engines like Google. Now almost every brand has its online presence and products are listed with their specifications and prices.

Impatience for Success

Most of the times entrepreneurs seem to be in a rush for making fast and easy money without even considering to amplify their websites and following the guidelines. That’s why many stores fail in their first attempt of achieving recognition and get abandoned within a few months. The patience and deep knowledge about buyer’s interests and purchasing behaviors are the keys to get leverage in the eCommerce field.

Excessive Shipping Rates

Meanwhile, when you are doing well with your eCommerce business, consider cutting off shipping rates to a minimum. As a startup, you can also facilitate shoppers by not deducting shipping charges as nearly 23% of shoppers made their purchases when online stores don’t take shipping charges at all. It is ideal to provide an excellent shopping experience to buyers, who have chosen your platform over hundreds of others.

Insecure Website and Payment Gateways

Your platform should also be fully secured so the buyer feels comfortable shopping there. Due to the huge number of cyber crimes, buyers are reluctant to approach a website that has higher chances of getting hacked. So, make sure you have taken every precaution for securing your website from online threats.

Another reason for the loss of visitors and sales is the poor user interface of your online store. People will leave the website if it is not loaded with essential functionalities and execute impression.

The compiled infographic has showcased some contingent facts that are the ultimate cause of e-commerce business failure. To explore more facts and statistics that why eCommerce businesses fail? Review this infographic:

Basically, experts say there are five rules of a killer PowerPoint presentation.

You need to become personal, ask various questions, use charts and graphs, add diagrams, and don’t forget about professional images. But these recommendations are pretty general and are more about the essence of the message rather than writing skills…

PowerPoint is a common tool used for writing slide shows. The program is commonly referred to as comparatively intuitive, informative, and engaging. How to improve your skills to create slides that are prominent and deliver a single message? The guide we’ve created has several steps.

Always consider the audience.

Learn visual hierarchy rules.

Work with animations.

Think of the Big Idea.

Follow the 5/5/5 rule.

Rely on grids.

Fade to blank if you’re talking.

Improve the images.

Add videos.

Make the title slide stand out.

Let’s see what tips each of them hides.

Step 1

Both your words and information presented on slides are to be tailored to the people you are delivering it to. Always take into account the audience you will be talking to. Be intentional as well as specific about everything they are going to hear and see, think of things that will make them get engaged in the process. The one, who uses the same presentation for different audiences, succeeds in delivering a message to one of them only, while dozens of others get lost in unknown terms and useless information. It is better to spend time rearranging slides than losing a chance to show yourself.

Step 2

Visual hierarchy is what the development of any PowerPoint project should start with. It deals with the element arrangement in a way to show the importance of the presentation. The theory is rather helpful in defining the slide structure so that it becomes eye-catching. The hierarchy is normally achieved via the use of contrasting colors that make the most essential elements stand out and via the text or image sizes.

Step 3

Did you know that PowerPoint has a great variety of built-in animations? Each and every one of them is available for free and helps make slides look better and deliver the data gradually, pointing out the most vital info. However, we suggest you forget about using too many tools for the same presentation as multiple effects may distract the audience. Choose two or three appropriate effects and apply them to most of the slides when needed.

Step 4

Why do we call it big? It’s because it must include one overarching message. This sort of idea is unbelievably important because it depicts your unique point of view and puts something at stake. Write the idea down, think over its main components that will definitely support it (elements like words, images, and audio). If some elements don’t bolster the core takeaway, they must be removed.

Step 5

Along with thinking over numerous details, it is essential to not make the audience overwhelmed with the amount of new information. That is why it is recommended to keep the text short and right to the point. This is what the 5/5/5 rule is about. It stands for using not more than five words per one text line, only five lines per slide and just five text-loaded slides.

Step 6

What are grids? They are the hidden slide structures arranged in horizontal or vertical lines and are meant to aid in creating presentations with well-balanced slides. Grids are useful when they include margins or slide borders that are free from graphics and words, gutters that are blank spaces to separate columns, and the latter ones are vertical sections for the actual content. You can set own grids to suit your data best.

Step 7

You are the main point of the entire presentation, not the slides. Fade to blank to draw the audience’s attention to you. Consider this is a close-up as in a good movie when the director makes a viewer pay attention to what is essential at this very moment.

Step 8

A good presentation is always more about images, not words. PowerPoint has brand new photo-editing capabilities that enhance the quality of photos when needed. Press ‘Picture Tool – Format’ and get the options: convert colors, crop, focus, shape, remove the background.

Step 9

Yes, inserting videos to your PP presentation is vital. Some speakers choose to import a video of them talking while a demo is shown in their slides. In this case, the video is posted on the screen’s corner while the slides are playing. Just press ‘Record’ to record the screen as you’re demonstrating something important. The program will record you talking and showing.

Step 10

Believe it or not, you need to have a title slide that stands out whether you use it as a marketing asset for social media, email and other channels or not. Spend time to think over the design and create a really visually engaging title page that draws people in from the very start of your presentation.

Writing and designing great slides is the same as creating amazing content. You need to make your PowerPoint presentation easy-to-digest and appealing so that people would get excited while sitting through it. Limit the use of prose, add simplicity to illustrations and the message, don’t forget about audio and video, and have a clear objective to create something really worthy. If you are too busy for making your own presentation and you need assistance from expert writers, contact an academic writing service where you can easily buy professional PowerPoint presentations online.

Over the years, there has been a dramatic change in the expectations of people who purchase online; thus, impacting user experience principles followed by businesses drastically.

When the concept of the online market was in the beginning stage, no one knew what exactly to expect from these online merchants. However, today, customers are well-informed and trained as well in terms of accepting sellers.

With customers becoming smarter, search engines have improved their algorithms to display information on the basis of what users require. As a result, everything related to internet business has evolved to make experienced customer-centric.

Coming to your business, irrespective of what consumers are expecting, it’s important to adapt as per the trends so as to provide fantastic user experience to the target audience. Owing to this, combining the principle of user experience (UX) and strategies of search engine optimization (SEO) can provide better results.

So, let’s understand more about why, being a business owner or an SEO expert, you should be bothering about UX principles and the ways you can implement to learn how to set up a business website.

Basic User Experience Principles:

One of the primary problems here can be that UX analysis doesn’t come as a part of the skill set of SEO. However, UX is also much more than just concentrating on website visitors. So, if you wish to get the best out of what you have to offer, understanding these basic principles can give you a better start.

1- Analytics Data & Account:

Most of the times, when it comes to SEO, people leave analytics behind. And, that may bring you down affectedly. Whether it’s for better user experience or SEO ranking, having reliable and accurate data is something you must not miss upon.

You must understand that qualitative analytics data is an essential aspect of user experience. And then, you’d also require correct tools to meet the analytics requirements. If you don’t have a significant analytics system, you may receive data from all directions and sources. This isn’t going to help you but add more to your confusion.

Therefore, ensure that you have centralized data, integrated into only one system. Once done, it’s recommended to audit the website analytics to ensure that the data you’re acquiring can be used to achieve different goals. The audit can also help discover and fix several other issues, like self-referrals, 404 errors, events tracking, cross-domain, property settings, and much more.

2- Effective Analytics Metrics & Engagement:

Another one of the vital user experience principles is to track the engagement and analytics metrics. For this, you’d have to emphasize three essential parameters:

Exit Rate

Bounce Rate

Time on Page

By providing adequate user experience, your goal should be to enhance these metrics to such an extent that they provide sufficient engagement level. With people spending less time on your website or bouncing back from your pages, all Google assesses is how visitors are leaving your site and finding better alternatives. That’s what Google is going to factor while deciding the rank of your site.

Therefore, as an SEO expert and business owner, your job is to understand the reason behind the high bounce rate along with other decreasing metrics and how you can improve it.

3- Qualitative & Effective Data:

While quantitative data, collected from analytics tools is essential, you must not overlook the worth of qualitative data at any cost. When talking about the latter, it’s necessary to understand how customers are engaging with your brand. Therefore, concentrating upon their feedback can help you to a great extent by reducing website errors, catering to pain points of potential customers, and increasing engagement – all of which is good for SEO.

To execute this step successfully, begin asking your customers their feedback on your products or services. For this, what you can do is come up with polls and surveys to let the potential customers answer transparently. With their response, you’ll be able to get an insight into their minds. In this way, figuring out what’s wrong and how to fix it will help you efficiently.

4- Consistency:

When talking about important user experience principles for SEO, it’s difficult to miss consistency. There are several reasons that make consistency important. To begin with, it decreases learning, meaning that your customers wouldn’t have to brainstorm upon every new representation of the products that you post if they’re already well-acknowledged with your brand.

With this process, you’ll be able to get a quick and faster response from your customers. When it comes to analytics data, consistency represents lower exit rates and bounce rates.

Best Practices for UX & SEO:

In reality, you don’t have to be an expert in UX designing to match the paces with such an experience that would complement the SEO efforts as well. However, before you dive into learning some best practices, you must keep in mind that not every technique may fulfill your goals and you may have to keep experimenting, depending upon your potential customers and the industry.

Having said that, let’s understand specific tips and best practices that may help you gain satisfactory results.

Keyword Research:

For almost every business owner and SEO expert, the primary starting point would be keyword research. To tell you the fact, this activity impacts practically every aspect of your website, right from the content to the message you want to communicate with the audience.

When you begin with this activity, you’re going to get familiar with a completely different world that exists only for keywords. Hence, you’ll have to be very particular about how you conduct this research and the kind of keywords that you choose so that you can rank higher as well as provide a better experience to your visitors.

Attracting More Clicks:

When you optimize your website, the ranking isn’t the only objective you should be following. However, one of the primary things is to get more clicks and visitors to your site. Having said that, the higher the rank you have, the more chances you get to obtain more clicks.

However, there are no compulsions and restrictions that you should follow to stand equally with your competitors when you can easily outpace them. It’s entirely possible to gain more clicks to the website in comparison with others who are ranking above you.

This can only be done by ensuring that your website catches the attention of people. It can be mainly through attractive language that would encourage them to click and visit your site. If you’re using bland language, it’s going to fetch you nothing but lousy click-through rate.

So, make sure your meta descriptions, title tags, URLs, breadcrumbs, and other similar elements have been curated well-enough.

Keep It Going:

Once you’ve achieved the target of click-through rates, understand that your job isn’t done yet. There would be a lot more to do. One thing that you must always remember is that your visitors will always be in a hurry. They wouldn’t take a lot of time just to figure out what your brand is what you’re offering.

In fact, if they won’t find what they’re looking for on your landing page, they’ll leave quickly. This means you must make sure that you’ve done everything correctly. Your visitors found something worthwhile when clicking on your site. Hence, you’d have to maintain that worth.

Don’t let them lose their interest. If they do, you’re going to lose them. So, make sure you properly optimize the following elements on the site:

Site ID

Navigation

Header Tags

Content Optimization

CTA

Wrapping Up:

Now that you’ve understood the user experience principles and how you can integrate SEO in it, now is the time to enhance your website by keeping the customer journey in mind. From the technology to your customers, everything is evolving; therefore, you must align your business with them to get more benefits.

To be deemed a competitive and successful brand, you have to develop a thorough brand book.

The set of rules in a brand book present valuable ideas and pointers for the future, as well as define the entire direction of your brand. For a sustainable, long-term business model, a detailed brand book is essential.

If your products are to succeed on the market, they have to be in sync with the brand book. There are a lot of different ways to create an amazing brand book, depending on the niche your business is in. However, some tips are universal than others. Follow them, and your product will have a meteoric rise.

Make an effective introduction

A brand introduction is much more than a window into your brand. It should be a detailed breakdown of your brand culture and what do you stand for. Begin with a story about how your brand came to be.

Be sure to emphasize how far you come from the moment your brand came to be. When putting together a brand introduction, you have to offset the brand story with visions of the future.

It’s quite simple when you observe it from afar. All the success from the past, combined with ideas for the future, adds up to an exciting present. Every brand book for a product should include a strong brand introduction.

Emphasizing the ideals and goals of your brand is the best way to instruct your employees on the development of a new project. To summarize, an effective introduction consists of answers to three questions:

What problem does the brand solve?

How does this particular product solve that problem?

How effectively does the product tell the story of your brand?

Choose logos and visual branding elements

After a brand introduction, it’s time to focus on branding. Every brand book must contain instructions for your team, on how to incorporate branding into that project.

Remember, the goal is not just to urge people into buying your new product. Instead, it’s to gauge their interest with one product and have them become loyal customers and brand ambassadors.

Logos are especially important, as they are the most usable and most powerful visual branding tool at your disposal. Work with your team to choose the right logo. If you are going to create a new logo, make sure it doesn’t stand out from your past brand identity.

In the case of a rebranding effort, you can use the brand book as an inspiration for a whole new identity. Include the logo in your website design plans, while also having the web design contract ready.

A good logo should be visible, but not in the focus of your design. It should add to the packaging, but not sway attention from the product itself.

Fuse words with images

A perfect brand book is neither entirely textual or visual. If you only use images, your target audience will feel like there is a lack of information. A text-only brand book will make it extremely hard to read.

The best way to prove the point is to have visual elements complement the textual part, and vice versa. Therefore, a large focus of the creation process should include a great copy.

If you and your team are having trouble with putting your ideas into words, think about outsourcing the descriptions and explanations for each section. The best way to do it is to expert writers from a writing service that specializes in writing college papers, white papers, business writing etc. EssayWritingLand is a good example of an online writing service.

When using a writing service, you can communicate with the writing team directly. Let them know about your goals, ideas and demands. With regular updates and briefs, you will know exactly how the brand book will look like.

Involve your entire team

According to a study by Salesforce, 86% of all employees have cited a lack of teamwork as the main cause of project failures. Brand books are no exception. By involving your entire team, the brand book will be more detailed than ever before.

Different inputs will give the entire team different ideas. Brainstorming will lead to unison in design, writing and every other element.

If only one or two people handle the creation of the brand book, they won’t be able to observe every section critically. Allocate responsibilities during the creation process. Not only will this make the process much faster, but the entire team will be able to weigh in and decide accordingly, in case of a dilemma or a problem.

Define public relation policies clearly

A well-put-together brand book is a representation of your brand, product and goals. Unfortunately, it cannot aid you in establishing interactive communication. To let the audience know about the right channels of communication, you need to devote an entire section to PR.

In recent years, influencer marketing has become more important than ever. 60% of all PR executives say it’s a vital part of the future. Thus, it would be a good idea to include a detailed plan concerning collaboration with influencers.

Insert the names and contact information of people responsible for communicating with clients, business partners, etc. Define social media policies in relation to activity rules, content that should be posted.

If you want to take a really thorough approach, define the desired tone for posts, color combinations for images and more. The more things you mention, the clearer your brand identity and vision will be.

Concluding thoughts

With the right organization and attention towards details, a perfect brand book is a very achievable goal. It’s an effort that will pay dividends for the product launch, as well as the overall success of your brand.

On the surface, it seems simple enough to create a web design contract. You just find a boilerplate web design contract or a template and edit to your heart’s content, right?

Well, not exactly. You see, not all web design contracts are created equal, and using a free website design contract you pulled off the web might not give you all of the legal protections you’re rightfully entitled to. And while we’re not lawyers (we are, however, fantastic web designers), knowing what a great web design contract should contain is the first step toward making sure yours is as ironclad as possible.

With that being said, you should always consult a lawyer who is well-versed in contracts before you jump right in. Now, let’s take a closer look at the components that make up a great web design contract:

Outlining the Scope of the Project

Every professional web developer dreads those two little words that signify that a project is going to go on a lot longer than anticipated — “scope creep”. This is when clients (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not) ask for more than what was initially agreed to. In other words, the scope of the project creeps up little by little, nibbling away at your time and profits.

A proper web design contract will outline exactly what’s expected and what will be delivered, and by when. Then, if the client starts asking for additional things, you can always fall back to the contract and demonstrate that to add these things will add to the cost and delivery time, putting the ball back in the client’s court to determine if this is something they really want to move ahead with or not.

All the Little Things

There are lots of little things that often get missed, even in the most thorough web design contracts. These include things like:

Who is providing the content for the website? Will the client be providing this? Will a third party copywriter or content writer be brought on board? Will the designer be responsible?

What about debugging the code? There can sometimes be hiccups with regard to coding and proper implementation. Who is responsible for this?

Who is going to test the design on various browsers and mobile devices to determine its responsiveness to various screen sizes and load times?

Making it clear who is responsible for which part of the contract (and then getting them to sign off on it) now will help save a lot of headaches later.

Testing, Tweaking and Technical Support

Even the most flawless website design contract needs to incorporate what will happen after the work is completed. Oftentimes, there will be updates with various plugins and integrations, and tests that need to be performed in order to ensure that the site is performing as well as it can be under various conditions.

Sometimes, clients opt to have their design team handle ongoing maintenance and tech support, updating the site and adding new features as time goes by. Including this in your contract, as well as specifying what will be done by the design team and what will be handled by the client) can help provide an additional and lucrative stream of income for your web development agency, month after month.

What if I Need to Make Changes?

Web design contracts are often saved in PDF format for easy portability across platforms and devices. PDF files can also be designed to be filled in with relevant information such as dates and addresses. They can also be programmed to accept electronic signatures. PDF is an older format that has stood the test of time while new features have become available to make using them even more convenient.

But one of the things that has always presented difficulty when considering web design contracts is making changes. Fortunately, there are several tools available to help edit a PDF on PC and Mac, even after you’ve saved it.

And keep in mind that a contract is only the first step. Keep the lines of communication open between you and your client while providing them with ongoing updates to show progress on their project. This allows you the freedom and flexibility to allow a designer-client business relationship to flourish while enjoying the strong foundation of a contract that’s built-in everyone’s best interest.

Among the millions of apps across app stores of different platforms only a few enjoy financial stability and actually are run like a serious business.

A recent report by Gartner makes this known truth even more explicit for our knowledge. Only 1 percent of all the mobile apps are actually successful as far as business revenue and stability is concerned. This alarming fact may be disheartening enough for you but nevertheless, it can surely make you understand some serious factors concerning the success of mobile apps as a business.

Those days are gone when mobile apps used to be taken as lightly as a special endeavor. Now with staggering development cost and gruesome marketing maneuvers you just cannot afford to consider apps without a specific business and financial goal. While most apps remain unsuccessful and a select few get overwhelming success one can take this as a serious opportunity as well. There must be some sure and already time tested formulas that make some apps join this sleek lane of success and stability.

Let us decipher and analyze some ways that have the potential to make your app successful.

1. Platforms

These two are the foremost considerations for analyzing the factors related to the success of few apps and literally overwhelming failure of most apps. As a platform, iOS is still ahead in respect of greater presence of revenue earning apps followed by mobile browsers and Android respectively. Though among the first three, the gap is closing at rapid speed. Windows phone and Blackberry still offers a little scope for making apps survive on the revenue earned from these platforms alone. A cross platform development approach with focus on native and device specific user experience is still the winner compared to expensive native development or so called one-for-all cross platform development.

2. Distribution and marketing of apps

More than 99% apps lack a proper distribution and marketing strategy and as a result they just do not reach their target audience. If your audience just does not know your app how can they show interest in it, better still download it? You cannot get a million downloads overnight or within just a month. You need to work for it well in advance. Most apps do the mistake of undertaking marketing maneuvers at the time of launching the app and naturally after months of their launch they struggle to cut deeper in audience response. On the other hand, most successful apps run their marketing campaign with a goal to build up expectation from their target audience well before the launch date and so when the app is actually launched in app store it immediately gets considerable viewers and downloads. Press and media release gearing towards the app launch is a good marketing strategy. Creating content in social media, influential review blogs and guest posts is another strategy that garners huge success.

3. Categories of apps

Obviously, some broader categories of apps make far better business than others. Though you cannot always change your deliverable focus as per this factor it is worth considering for measuring the chances of various app categories. Enterprise apps, business and productivity apps enjoy the highest revenue followed by other categories. In the second tier health, fitness, communication, and social networking apps enjoy greater earning than other app categories. These first 4 or 5 categories together consist of the most successful and financially thriving apps across the app stores. With other positive factors boosting the chances of your app category cannot be a major concern, but still, some categories enjoy better revenue earning potential than others.

4. Engagement and retention

This obviously depends on how better you have distributed your app and garnered response from audience. Once your app slowly reaches certain level of downloads and user base getting feedback from users and engagement with them will further add more value to the app and help you retain your user base over a long time. There are some important factors to observe on a regular basis. For instance, pay attention to the number of people using your app on a regular basis and the percentage of users who after using the app a few times just did not open it for a long time. Remember, in app universe most apps that are not visited or used frequently run the risk of getting deleted and losing users. Getting the user attention on a continuous basis is the key to your success in retaining users and growth.

There are other important aspects to observe in this regard as well. With the Flurry Analytics tool, you can easily see the parts of your app that are used most. This type of analysis would further let you see the typical user behavior and the way they expect the app to get better or user friendly. If there is any scope of introducing a new feature or app content is lurking behind the surface it can be observed and analyzed with tools like this. In an ever changing mobile environment, the user preference cannot be static and naturally every time you have to look out for new scopes of developing the app to address emerging user needs and choices. This continuous feedback and engagement is the key to retain your existing users and expand the user base at rapid speed. This has been a persistent success factor for almost all the major successful apps till date and you cannot afford to ignore it.

5. In-app tactics that pay in the long run

If you have several apps under one roof, promoting each other in a contextual manner becomes easier. Otherwise partnering with well known apps with related niche can also pay you great result. To conclude we must refer to some successful in-app tactics that can help you build revenue or downloads in quicktime. Incorporating app discovery links within the app content and usage pattern is a great way to promote another app and garner downloads. For instance within an education app, you can easily create a user link to another student friendly productivity or notebook app. Utilizing and analyzing the user data you can further customized promotion of app for respective users.

Bottom Line

In spite of huge growth in the use of mobile apps for most apps the competition is continuing to get tougher every day. Naturally, without stringent and methodical focus on growth, retention and user preference an app does not stand a chance of getting enough revenue to sustain as a business. The above mentioned tactics decided upon the common success factors of major apps can help you take sure footed strides in app universe.

If marketers and businesses expect to compete and gain market share in the digital space, they have to stay ahead of the curve.

This means taking note of new trends and even going so far as to adopt the most promising ones. As digital content marketing trends are constantly evolving, one can only be ready to adapt.

Now that we’re approaching 2019, it is time to evaluate the digital marketing trends that are gaining the most traction – the ones that have the most potential to change aspects of the digital marketing landscape as we know it.

1. Chatbots

Chatbots are the forefront of the digital marketing discussion.

What makes them different from fleeting trends of the past, however, is that they are poised to completely revolutionize the way businesses market their business – and for good.

Chatbots are nothing more than software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to communicate with customers. Customers can have real-time conversations with chatbots who are programmed to respond in a conversational and even personalized way.

Add to the fact that chatbots can have their own name and avatar, they are virtually indistinguishable from humans themselves.

If the best marketing is cantered around problem solving, what makes chatbots particularly powerful is the fact thatthey offer a direct line of communication between the problem and the solution, which inevitably leads to more sales.

Chatbots can ask the customer pointed questions about their particular tastes and then offer up the best possible solution. From there, the chatbot can be programmed to answer additional questions and overcome any objections.

The chatbot can even track purchase history, which businesses can then use to make offers at the right time. Pizza Hut, for example, does exactly this. They will send you timely deals from within Facebook Messenger (you can also order a pizza as well).

Of course, marketing doesn’t just end with the completed transaction. Chatbots provide a direct customer service line where customers can get prompt answers in real-time, day or night.

2. Voice Search is Changing Content and SEO

The fundamental way in which people search online is changing. Much of this has to do with the fact that a large proportion of people are now making use of voice assistants like Apple’s Siri to directly ask questions instead of actually manually typing questions in their keyboard.

This has meant that queries are also becoming much more conversational in nature.

You can also see the rise in voice search through the increasingly popularity of voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home as well.

Simply put, the rise in voice search is going to change the way digital marketing agencies approach both content and SEO. To plan for the rise in voice search, marketers and businesses will need to do some of the following:

Focus on long-tail keywords given that searches are more conversational (and question-based)

Create FAQs (that also includes those long-tail keywords)

Prioritize local SEO; a large number of local searches are voice-based, which means that marketers and businesses should make sure that they are following the best practices when it comes to local SEO. Also ensure that you claim your Google My Business listing and that you optimize your listing as well

3. Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic advertising has been talked about for nearly 5 years, but it has only been in the last year or so that it has become a particularly hot topic.

According to eMarketer, 84% of digital display ads will be programmatic by 2019. In other words, it is worth paying attention to.

If you’re not familiar with programmatic advertising, it uses artificial intelligence to automate the process of buying ads, a process which typically involves a lot of manual work. This saves both time and money.

However, programmatic advertising also uses artificial intelligence to determine which companies will offer the best return on investment. It will also monitor ad spend.

In this way, programmatic advertising takes out much of the guesswork of campaigns of the past while increasing efficiency and saving costs all at once.

4. Visual Search

Visual search is quickly taking over various shopping areas as well. And it’s not hard to see why. With visual search, you can take a picture of a guitar you saw in a magazine and then find versions of that guitar online.

As you can see, this search behavior would immediately place someone higher up in the conversion funnel than a text-based search.

The biggest companies in the world, including both Google and Microsoft, are both investing in visual search with Google Lens being one such example.

Visual search will clearly have a lot of implications for the retail industry, but incorporating visual search into your strategy is something that nearly all businesses will need to begin thinking seriously about.

The Takeaway

Chatbots, voice search, programmatic advertising and visual search all promise to be much more than passing trends. They will either completely shake up the digital marketing space or at least be around for a long while.

Put another way, the future of digital marketing trends are worth evolving with.